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—BY— 

C. F, GRAVES 

PRESIDENT 

ROANOKE COLLEGIATE INSTITUTE 
Elizabeth City, N. C. 



Price 10c. 






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COPYRIGHT APPLIED FOR 

1918. 



NOV -7 1918 











THE POLICY OF TBE 
YOUNG NEGRO 



In all parts of the world today principally, 
with undeveloped races there is a ceasiess 
state of unrest. And this apparent restless- 
ness seems bedded chiefly in the blood and 
fi.bre of the young. All classes or our read- 
ing public have been watching with unabs.ted 
interest the rising tide of dissatisfaction 
among the Balkan states of Europe. Thej^ 
are also appraised of the portentions awak- 
ening of the young blood in China, Ja.pa.n 
and Korea. In Haiti and Cuba yet lie the 
smouldering fuse of rebellion and disturb- 
ance, and even in Egypt and in India the 
spirit of progress and aggression runs rife in 
the rising generations; so that practically in 
all corners of the earth, there seem to be 
certain manifestations of unrest and 
a desire for supposedly better things in gov-- 
ernment and society possessing the people. 

The evolution of this feeling has frequent- 
ly demonstrated itself in these nations by 
violent outbursts of passion and general dis- 



order against the parent rule, sometimes 
with sad and unexpected reverses and some- 
times with immeasurable success, but alv/ays 
in my opinion with a dauntless and a harm- 
less spirit. 

It might be asked by some why is it that 
these nations or races which w^e consider 
thus inadvertently bring about a disturbing 
chaotic frame of mind in their governments 
and against their countries car-ng forth the 
quality of international pity c iid some time 
intern?„tional intervention either by treaty or 
by bloodshed? The ansv/er is not far to seek. 
For the young blood in these na.tions is be- 
coming thoroughly saturated with the spirit 
of progress and with the spirit of the ad- 
vanced civilization which is remaking the 
map of the hemispheres, chaining together 
both oceans with the wings of the wind and 
v/resting from the clutches of mystery the 
vr onderful and unknown know^ledge obtained 
from science, art, invention and reproduc- 
tion. These hitherto child races are av/aking 
both to the rapidity and immensity of the 
onrushing, maddening quest after the *'holy 
grail" of knowledge and of self possession. 

But this emphasis and initiative that is 
now going on is not confined strictly to the 
undeveloped races of the eastern hemis- 



phere, ncr the sea islands, but v/ith the more 
highly civilized races of America the young 
are pressing them.selves into service at an 
admirable and an appreciative ratio so much 
so until theorists and speculatists like Osier 
ana Carnegie have endeavored to determine 
the age hmit of American citizens for serv- 
ice and there is still further evidence of the 
emphasis tha+ is placed upon the j^oung by 
the heads of local governments, States and 
even municipalities and be it said to the 
credit of the young in all lands that v/herever 
there is unrest, discontent or dissatisfaction, 
that it is generally a brooder of better 
things. 

But with rsicrence to the polir^.y of the 
young American Negro there is very much 
idle and even sometinme erroneous specula- 
tion. He is perhaps not thoroughly known 
by his critics, not even by those v/ho touch 
his life in various ways for mercenary pur- 
poses. The real life and policy of the young 
Negro must be unselfishly embraced, free 
from the bane of preiudice and all of is un- 
holy and corrupting influences. And it is 
with this purpose in view that we desire to 
candidly lay before you the policy of the 
young Negro. From the foregoing it is not 
strange then that his acts, feelings and 



yearnings should crystalize into a policy 
distinctly his own and yet tempered by all of 
the old time savory influences that hover 
around the faithful fathers and mothers of 
the days of slavery. And too it is just to the 
American people of v^hich he forms a part 
that his policy be known and made bare 
before them. 

In the first place let us qualify the young 
Negro as that class, which is y:iing in years, 
who knows nothing of the cdious require- 
ments of bondage, that class though old in 
age, yet fresh and rich in thought and 
material, that class which is meeting the 
requirements of all thoughtful and sane 
people, that class which is filling the schools 
with patient and diligent students the 
churches with devout and humble worship- 
ers, the home v/ith neat efficient and industri- 
ous inmates, that class which is reaching out 
into the business, financial and the com- 
mercial world endeavoring to find standing 
room, that class v\^hich is inhabiting the lands 
and preparing a permanent place of resi- 
dence for himself and his kind, that class of 
Negroes v/ho go through life with his head 
high up and his heart swelling with the patri- 
otic blood in it conscious of the fact that God 
made him to be a man. 



In cur discussion of the policy of the young 
Negro, we do not disclaim any of those 
dearly bought virtues that have passed over 
to us from our fathers who were once the 
bone of contention the haughty lordlings 
pride and the proud man's contumely! We do 
not deny nor disown the hard and furrowed 
brow, the bowed form, the sunken cheek the 
ebon hue and the facial features of you who 
sit before me ! It is not our purpose do dwarf 
nor minimize the importance of your cries 
away in some lonesome valley or upon the 
hilltop calling upon the Lord for your a.nd my 
deliverence, you prayed for deliverence when 
deliverance seemed impossible and through 
the faith and insistence of your humble and 
earnest prayers deliverance did come a.nd out 
of your mufHed appeal to Almighty God in 
the 17th, ISth and 19th centuries have come 
able and le3.rned theologians to deliver the 
glad tidings of good things, fine educators, 
orators, and scholars, doctors, lawyers, skill- 
ed artisians and tradesmen. 

And if I can but place a wreath upon the 
heroic services of the men who had the brav- 
ery, the hardihood and the endeavor to face 
cannon, gra,pe and gun on our behalf, let me 
not be tardy in the task to speak a word for 
the men who endured hardness, hunger, priva 



tion and even death itself in order to make a 
way for liberty. The services of the Negro 
soldiers to this government should never be 
blotted off of the records of earth. In my 
humble and circumscribed imagination the 
days between 1861-1865 were seasons that 
tried mens very souls, — when as they march- 
ed in sight of each other on opposing lines 
and as they advanced the general ordered 
"Fire!" The volleys are ma^^o the smoke 
bajiishes men are dead on tho right and left 
shrieking in pain and weltering in blood, and 
grimly clasping on to the straggling object 
in sight between life and death, being 
trampled upon by the satanic, maddened host 
serving as a funeral pyre in aiding to a closer 
fight for surviving comrades, I candidly sub- 
mit that only the highest moral courage 
could have been equal to the task — all of this 
and unspeakably more you underwent, brave 
fathers in order that this day might be ours 
and justly you deserve the honor and may 
my tongue become impotent and cleave to 
the roof of my mouth should I fail to indulge 
in the most flattering ebulitions of praise 
touching upon your soldierly valor. And may 
the people of this Republic for all time to 
come sing of the valor of the Negro soldier 
in beatific and seraphic strains, sing of it 



beyond the Jordan! Sing of it beyond the 
stars. 

So much indeed for a glimpse at our reUcs 
of slavery. Let us ask why does the young 
Negro need a pohcy somewhat dehneated 
from his fathers? We have it from the Bible 
that the wayward and murmuring people 
who came up from Egyptian slavery under 
Moses that after they had lived among and 
seen and heard other people, they too desired 
a king like other people, which request was 
granted in the person of Saul. Whether the 
analogy is true and wholesome the young 
Negro desires to have something, to do some- 
thing and to be something. He therefore 
needs a policy of his own that he may exhibit 
himself as a freeman and to this plain and 
logical path he is -inexorably dedicating all 
his energies. He knows nothing of slavery 
as an institution. He knows that this instit- 
ution undignified and inferrorized his people 
and he needs to acquire a character of such 
a kind that will vindicate his people and serve 
to uneducate the world that he is of inferior 
quality. His pohcy is therefore beside being 
innate with himself accentuated by the great 
Apostle Paul, by Thomas Jefferson and by 
Jehovah himself — it is to feel that he is made 
in the image of God and that he is a free 



moral agent responsible primarily to His 
Maker for his acts. This is his policy toward 
himself, that in the exercise of his duties and 
obligations, he looks upward unto God from 
which source all blessings come and con- 
stantly ask to guide his steps aright, while 
we keep our faces toward the morning of 
progress. 

Then again the young Negro feels that 
while he is a free agent, he is individually re- 
sponsible for his influence upon others. The 
ideal young Negro of whom we speak feels it 
his duty to become a permanent citizen, to 
keep the peace, pay his taxes, assist in bring- 
ing the guilty to justice, secure a home, to 
be industrious in whatever profession he 
chooses, be manly, honest, earnest in all 
of his transactions. He realizes that others 
are watching his acts and are becoming in- 
fluenced by them as he is watching the acts 
of others. Therefore he becomes a perman- 
ent and responsible resident and not a float- 
ing idler, he is orderly and law abiding and 
presentable along the public highways, he 
works and earns a living honestly and honor- 
ably and demands a just transaction. How- 
ever we frequently see on our streets droves 
of hearty young men with upturned trousers, 
collar open, shirt bosom, ha-t over the right 



eye, playing tlie bully, apparently unmindful 
of the great responsibility resting upon them 
to be an intelligent, responsible member of 
society. Such an exhibition of apparent un- 
concern represents none of the higher aspir- 
ations of the young Negro and with such 
demonstrations of tl:.riftlessness and vag- 
rancy the young Negro is directly not in 
sympathy. He has formulated his ideals of 
greatness from the greatest examples of men 
of his own and other races ever recorded or 
dreamed of in histories and in all of his striv- 
ings, he pants for such a station that will 
bring him justly up to his peers in all races 
and assign him a permanent and enviable 
place around the shrine of the great 
parliament of man, and therefore in all con- 
sideration today one hears the cry of Negro 
manhood. This declaration is not meant to 
create friction, but simply to disabuse the 
Negro's CT.n mind of any aspersion of in- 
feriority. 

Again the policy of the young Negro is to 
do something. Scholars have classed the 
present generation from the seventies as the 
fastest age the world has known. We take it 
to mean that because of the discoveries of 
men in their various lines of v/ork due to 
long appUcation, powerful and immense in- 



dustrial and commercial institutions have 
grown up, so too the minds of men have be- 
come powerful and immense; pov^erful in 
that they desire to enlarge upon whatever 
interests they may have and immense be- 
cause of the disposition of mankind to want 
more power. Then the policy is to do some- 
thing such as other free men have done. In 
the world of men even from time dating al- 
most beyond the haze of civilization,, men 
have done things and their works still live 
after them and the poUcy of the young Negro 
is not to die. Look now over the records a 
hriel moment and there before your eyes are 
the deeds of men in all walks of life almost 
astonishing in contemplation. I n Babylon 
there were the hanging gardens of Nebuch- 
adnezzar, like beautiful myths displayed in 
natural harmony. In Egypt there stand the 
great piles of massive stone in the form of a 
pyramid to mark the last resting place of the 
mighty Pharoah. In China there are the 
pagodas and temples of worship as shrines 
of puzzUng arcitecture. In Greece besides 
being the "land of scholars and the nursery 
of arms" there stands the Areopagitica, the 
Mars Hill of all ages, hewn out of the rocks, 
coming to Rome, without mentioning her 
orators, poets and historians, there is today 



upon and extending outward from her seven 
hills the architecture and industrialism that 
might fill volumns with the story of its 
fabrication of beauty. England, France, 
Germany and the rest deserve mention and 
here in America the young Negro is diligently 
striving with all his might to emulate the in- 
dustrialism and the wonderful strides along- 
all lines of power of his brother of the white 
race, and to this end he is dedicating all of 
his energies until today he has a knowledge 
of the manipulation of stocks and bonds, of 
corporations and banks, of books and busi- 
ness that he could not acquire, did he not 
have something definite in his mind and 
something tangible before him. What is 
there to prevent the execution of this policy 
on the part of the young Negro in America? 
He has the same call running in his blood 
urging him to climb the sights as that of 
other races. He has friends, he has his own 
premonitions of greatness, his life is guided 
by the same hand of Providence that holds 
the rest of the world still, he is becoming 
stronger in intellect, in wealth, and in morals 
as a race of 50 years ago of free and un- 
trammeled development. Is he weak? Is he 
powerless to prove his valor in reemancipat- 
ing himself from a m.ore extsperating system 



of poverty of ideas, of admirxiSLration and of 
execiitiveness in this free country/? I sub- 
mit that the young Negro is suffused with the 
spirit of doing things. There were times 
when examples were few but suffice it that 
in nearly all sections the American people 
are appraised of the enterprises of various 
kinds from the cross roads grocery to the 
wholesale establishment, from the burial 
society to the insurance company, from the 
little one room log school to the universitly, 
from the miserly savings tied up in the red 
bandanna handkerchief to the endless enter- 
prises owned and controlled by the young 
Negro. 

Furthermore it is in the soul of the young 
Negro to have something purely his own. 
The young Negro wants something and he 
is fast acquiring it and who can hinder him? 
The "Bock of bocks" teaches us thptt "the 
earth is the Lords and the fulness-thereof" 
and he who keeps nearest to the Lord will 
reap some of the fruits thereof. The young 
Negro wants a farm and he has one, he 
wants a residence and he ha.s one, he wants 
horses, cattle and vehicles and he has all 
kinds, he wants to pursue the various pro- 
fessions in life and he pursues them v/ith 
credit, he wants a fine church and he has one. 



he wants a school, a store, a corpora,tion, a 
town and so on and he has one. He wants 
an education and he gets it and gets it good 
and these possessions have wonderfully in- 
creased his appetite and his desire for more 
beyond; and it should also be remembered 
that all of his earthly belongings have been 
secured with credit to the community in 
which he lives, for in nearly every instance 
no one knov/s of the occupancy of the home 
church and school from the exterior, nor 
does any one know from the looks of the 
animal v/hether he belongs to Mr. A or Mr B. 

Some one might ask hov/ is it that the 
young Negro has these possessions, when 
his ancestors had no money nor any thing 
above earning power save muscle? It will be 
remembered that the Negro brought over 
from the days of slavery the habit of self ab- 
negation with other things and in order to 
acconipilsli certain well established ends he 
can restrain himself. I do not advocate here 
that any Negro can or ought to live on less 
than any other healthy man lives but in a 
number of instances he practices self depri- 
vation of supposed luxuries until he clutches 
firmly the goal of his cherished ambition. 

Then too, the young Negro is interested 
about his neighbor and he has candidly asked 



himself who is my neighbor? And the answ- 
er has ccnie to him in plain and unequivocal 
terms that it is the man next to him and he 
is bent on conserving the friendship and pro- 
tection by all reasonable and m3.nly methods. 
He is determined to deal fair with the man 
next to him. lie is bent upon having his 
neighbor understand that he can be trusted 
and that he is anxious to draw nearer along 
lines that will bring God's peace into the 
world. The j^oung Negro is in the gi^eater 
sympathy with his neighbor than he thinks 
him to be. He is anxious about the success 
and stability of whatever community in 
which he may live, for he resides in such a 
place for business and for settling of his 
family the same as his neighbor and he is 
solicitious about intruders and unsettled con- 
ditions as any other man. His contact with 
College life and manly sport has tempered 
out the narrowness and class hatred, has 
given him to the Vv^orld inured to the hard- 
ships and conflicts which is the common lot 
of all, so that the American people today are 
actually into contract with a class of young 
people whom they may trust as confidently 
as the fathers of old and it is also true that 
they are facing them under new^ conditions 
and that they, too, must adjust themselves 



to tlieir nevr conuiticns with the new Negro. 

There is nothmg whatever to be feared 
from the pohcy of the young Negro whom v/e 
bring before you, save that he means to scale 
along the heights that others have with 
patience, long suffering, tenacit^^ and dog- 
gedness of determination and ability scaled. 
He means to be kind, corteous, respectful, 
honest and industrious toward his neighbor 
and is in 2.II courtesy and gentiliiy going to 
demand the same from his neighbor. He 
asks for equal accommodations and court- 
esies as a man, as his neighbor exacts from 
him, these things done and all will go well. 

Then finally it is needless to say that the 
young Negro is going to forget God. This 
has never been a part of his reckoning. Ke 
looks up to and serves the same God of his 
fathers. He rehearses and consoles himself 
with the same old story of love for the un- 
seen a-3 I::':: fathers did. He will never lose 
the saving grace that purchased his liberty, 
he is going to serve His Maker as devotedly 
as of old and he feels that the Lord will bless 
and preserve him and his posterity. Fre- 
quently, we hear it asked what is going to 
become of the young Negro after all of the 
old heads die out. This is said, we are aware 
at a time when despondency and gloom cast 



a shadow over the people because of the 
haughty and stiff necked, and uncivilized at- 
titude of a certain class of young people who 
represent no wealth, nor intelligence and are 
generally good for nothing save to put more 
caliber into the fiber of them v/ho are endeav- 
oring to represent the best ideals i:i the race, 
such a class might be found in all races and 
by such a class the representative young 
Negro is not to be judged no more than the 
worthless of other races; but let us tell you 
v/hat will become of the young Negro. If 
you seek an ansv/er look around you! Behold 
the enduring monuments of enterprise he is 
setting up! See his beautiful residence, go 
into that home a,nd you will see elegantly 
caparisoned drawing rooms and parlors tap- 
estried with the most costly material, and 
tarry awhile and you will discover all of the 
ear marks of the cultured Christian family. 
Go into his church and you will notice fine 
angular and arcade cushioned peY\^s, arched 
w^alls embracing all of the architesture from 
Doric, Gothic and Corinthian to American, 
you will w^end your way down carpeted aisles 
while your footsteps are hushed as if usher- 
ing into the presence of the Eternal shrine, 
you will hear the loud and deep toned in- 
strument piling the air with its volume, then 



the choir will break forth into rich and 
ecstatic strains of heavenly music, and you 
will listen to a discourse for scholarship 
wisdom, eloquence and spiritual power 
worthy 'of Spurgeon, Luther, Wesley, Talm- 
age, Beecher, Moody and the great. 

Go into his school room and there you will 
find his dissertations and deftness in dealing 
with the occult as lucid and explicable as 
Maecenas, Pythagoras, Pestalozzi, Mann, 
Dwight or any of the famous educators. Go 
into his place of business, his store, his office, 
and you will observe well laden shelves, 
courteous and efficient clerks; by the bed- 
side you will find the disciples of Aesculapius 
fully and successfully emulating the great in 
medicine; before the bar Blackstone, were he 
sitting around, would delight to fellov»,'Ship 
and accentuate the shrewdness and knowl- 
edge of the eboned sons in law, upon the 
stage you will find that the young Negro is 
as clever a.nd entertaining as Euripides or 
Shakespeare and in various other answer- 
able ways the young Negro is meeting the 
conditions satisfactory to himself and his 
most sanguine admirers and if he strictly 
adheres to the policy of trying to be some- 
thing, to have something, and to do some- 
thing, like Milton, "Me thinks I see in my 



ininds eye a noble and puissant race arising 
out of her dull slumber and stretching her- 
self like an eagle pruning her wings and 
casting her eye upward toward the burning 
sun and shaking herself and preparing to 
soar aloft." 

C. F. GRAVES. 



48 



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